Posted
by
Soulskill
on Sunday June 05, 2011 @08:16AM
from the integrating-is-just-a-fancy-word-for-duct-taping dept.

necro81 writes "It has long been recognized that adding capacitors in parallel with batteries can improve the performance of hybrid and electric vehicles by accepting and supplying spikes of power, which reduces stress on the battery pack, extending range and improving cycle life. The challenge has been figuring out where to put them, when batteries already compete for space. A new research prototype from Imperial College London has integrated them into the body panels and structural frame of the vehicle itself. In their prototype, carbon fiber serves as both the structure for the vehicle and electrode for the energy storage sandwiched within."

On the bright side, a conductive bullet hitting the side will cause a nice discharge and maybe a fire. Or if a piece of metal pierces the capacitor after a collision, and the discharge either ignites gas fumes if the car is a hybrid, or the short heats something and causes a fire. Yes, energy storage in the frame is a really good idea. Also, if capacitors are in a door panel, which of course moves, then the energy-carrying cable leading out of the door will be flexed every time the door moves, until the day

I remember experiments in college with exploding-wire phenomena, where we pulsed conductors with capacitors and vaporized wires. This both generates a shock pulse and can do a soft X-ray discharge. Yeah, I want that in my car.

Why not? It sounds like something that might give you superhero powers...

On the bright side, a conductive bullet hitting the side will cause a nice discharge and maybe a fire.

You mean, if I'm in one of these cars, getting shot at with bullets COULD BE DANGEROUS? Goodness!

Or if a piece of metal pierces the capacitor after a collision, and the discharge either ignites gas fumes if the car is a hybrid, or the short heats something and causes a fire.

Again, I don't see how that would be unique to capacitors in the frame. Seems that if you have a collision, and gas is released, -that's- the dangerous part.

Also, if capacitors are in a door panel, which of course moves, then the energy-carrying cable leading out of the door will be flexed every time the door moves, until the day the cable breaks. Although window motor cables seem to endure without breaking, so maybe it's okay.

And power locks, and power to the mirrors. So... we agree this is probably not actually an insurmountable problem that engineers would be unable to solve, right?

I remember experiments in college with exploding-wire phenomena, where we pulsed conductors with capacitors and vaporized wires. This both generates a shock pulse and can do a soft X-ray discharge. Yeah, I want that in my car.

Ideally the engineers would have taken more classes on the subject and would be able to discer

Well..."Again, I don't see how that would be unique to capacitors in the frame. Seems that if you have a collision, and gas is released, -that's- the dangerous part."They are talking about using body panels. So any impact could cause a breach. Ever see a wreck where no body panel has been damaged? Take a look at a gas tank and you will see how small it is and how they put the "frame" around it to protect it. There that should show the difference.and now."And power locks, and power to the mirrors. So... we a

So does that mean that if you leave a light on and run your battery down, you have to take it to the dealer to get it repaired? What freaking lunatic came up with that one? Not that I'll ever buy a Ford again, given my experiences with them, but that just clinches it.

The truth is full of caveats, but if it gets low enough to warrant replacement and one does not use jumper cables to wire in another battery (dangerous with the positive terminal being very short and near much metal) then the answer is yes. A simple jump start won't require dealer service.

Wow. If my '99 WIndstar did that, I'd have had to take it to the dealer at least two or three times in any given year. Which is to say that I would have ripped out the alarm system and the radio about a week after the warranty ended....

Awaiting the release code... that was (or should have been) printed in your owner's manual. An anti-theft code is not a problem, so long as the owner is in control of it.

Note that if you lose your code (which happened to me recently), you can call up VW and have them tell it to you for free. (The asshole dealers, however, will attempt to charge you $20 if the radio isn't original to the car and you need to pull it out of the dash to read the serial number. I borrowed the radio removal tools from a stereo in

Seriously? I got a used Honda Odyssey earlier this year, and my 2-year-old has already managed to kill the battery once (by turning on a light inside the vehicle that we didn't notice he did). Got a free jump from our local AMA-affiliate (AMA is the Alberta equivalent of the CAA which is the Canadian equivalent of AAA - not sure what the equivalent is in other parts of the world). Noticed the light, turned it off. But the radio and nav systems were both locked out. Opened the user manual where the prev

I don't know if the dealer would charge for resetting the radio, because i found out about it when getting a quote from the dealer before changing the battery myself. I was lucky. As for the codes, they are not in the user's possession as that would defeat the purpose of having a code in the first place (the dealer's argument when I asked where the codes are). And in any case, even if the codes were in the user's possession, how many would even think to open the fine manual?

My sister just bought a brand new Ford - the radio code is "in her possession" in that it's included with the car's manual. They do suggest you don't keep it in the car with the rest of the car's documentation, and that you don't lose it.

Code-locked radios (for anti theft) have been common for years, mainly because the factory radios don;t usually have removable facias.

Some anti-theft radios have a code, provided with the owner's manual, that you can enter after the radio has lost standby power. Others know what vehicle they are in.

I'm fairly sure what you were trying to say is that in modern vehicles (As in Fords with the Sync system) the electronics are keyed to the VIN, which is provided by the car's computer. If you remove the radio and put it in another vehicle, it will require rekeying, which can only be performed by authorized service centers.

There are strict laws when it comes to car safety. Car manufacturers can NOT knowingly (intentional or otherwise) make it dangerous to service a car, as doing so may affect emergency personnel or the driver/passengers in breakdown situations.

If the facts regarding the case of my 2007 Ford Focus impress fear, uncertainty, and doubt upon those who read them, then complain to your friendly Ford engineer, not to me. There is no reason for me to not tell what happened.

Whether it is dealer policy or Ford policy for not giving the user the code I don't know. But in my case the result is the same. Maybe Ford should make it a policy or requiring their dealers to give out the codes.

Does anyone fail to see the problem of having what would likely be several Farads of high voltage stashed away in the body panels? I would expect if fully charged the capacitors if shorted, in a fender bender or whatever, they would leave little trace that they or anything that touches them ever existed. Just a spot of charred metal and the smell of electrolyte.

And what about the aging of capacitors or capacitor failure? It's certainly exiting when a small capacitor goes POP! Imagine when one of these suckers blow your doors off while you're driving!

It's certainly exiting when a small capacitor goes POP! Imagine when one of these suckers blow your doors off while you're driving!

Capacitors that go POP are usually electrolytics, where the electrolyte boils when it gets shorted. There are capacitors that are self-repairing, a short vaporizes the conductor around the failure. Presumably, the capacitors they are proposing here, doping the carbon fibers with lithium, would work that way.

That must have been an electrolytic capacitor. The larger ones have a safety pressure relief vent, smaller ones have striations on the top so that if it blows up the case will be forced towards the circuit board, instead of flying up. Older ones didn't have this, I have seen several of them blown up, lots of bits of foil and fluff from the paper insulation flying around.

Reminds me, many a years ago I did a short internship in an Olivetti service center, on my first monitor repair the guy teaching me told me to check the cap wasn't charged before disassembling the monitor - young and naive I asked how to do that; he gave me a screwdriver and told me to short the pins. Did teach me to have respect for large caps:-). (Not sure what the proper procedure is, but dumping the charge like that sure is exciting).

As opposed to, say, driving around with ten or more gallons of gasoline in the car?Or even, real live CNG, since vehicles are out there, and fracked gas is Our Future.We'll be fine (or rather, no worse off), as long as an arcs-in-crashmobile doesn't run into a leaks-gas-in-crashmobile.:-)

And semi-seriously, how many deaths to you predict that this would cause, and how does that number compare with pedestrians killed per year (US, 3000), people-in-cars killed per year (US, 30,000), or people dying early for

I hate it when there is small fender bump on my commute to work and the people just sit on the side of the road. The traffic piles up with neck cranners, the 30 ride goes to 45 or 50 mins and on a hot day, not fun at all. If a blown capacitor obliterates the two cars into nothing..oh well. Maybe people will start to pay more attention to driving then talking a phone, eating breakfast, dressing or whatever they do other then focus on driving.

I'd think they'd be far safer in the front and rear quarter panels I wouldn't want a capacitor in my cars door or roof that is just asking for trouble when it comes to accidents especially ones where the passengers might have to be cut free from a wreck.

Besides mechanics, please recall that EMS and police often face the issue of getting through metal to reach injured passengers. The 200 volts typically in a hybrid battery is one issue, knowing the location of batteries and how to disconnnect them another, but the thought of potentially still charged capacitors in the body frame sounds like an issue that could hinder response to emergencies.

" ( perhaps near the engine mount, isolated from the rest of the frame but still near the engine and possible to run wires through the chassis to the batteries etc ) out of the way and where hazard crews wont get buzzed if they try get the person out."

If you hit the wire coming from the PARALLEL wired cap, no matter if it's the engine side in your example or the wire going to the battery side, BOTH sides of the wire to where the parallel caps are hooked up carry

Err sorry, just to add to my above comment.. the other issue with it being a European (or as the link you've provided German) thing is they don't have all of the cars the US has (such as my Xterra), and they have different safety standards, so unless there's a US version of it there's kind of no point.

Agreed with previous posters, having electricity stored in such a way throughout a vehicle - regardless of volts or amps - doesn't seem like such a hot idea (pun intended). It would certainly be a no-go on any vehicle with any sort of secondary, fueled motor, be it gas, hydrogen, etc., and the potential for other accident based on age, faulty manufacture, simple atmospheric conditions (how well will these fare when exposed to salt air in coastal areas) and too many other things to list here is simply enormous. There is danger enough in basic battery systems during a car accident, especially a major one that might involve another I.C.E. vehicle on fire... I don't relish the idea of trying to an injured person out a car that might kill me for touching the wrong exposed part of a wrecked frame.

If you replace electricity with fuel, you would get to the same result, I assume.

At least they try to think outside the box and then see where it leads them. Sure it might kill a few people, but so did planes and steam engines and a lot of other things before they were turned into more save designs.

Couldn't you just put some sort of microcontroller in with the caps so they only discharge if they are getting a code signal? Certainly you'd need some relays or big ass FETs or SCRs inside but you'd need those anyway for your "throttle", why not just put it in with the power source in one package? Then there's no worries about the emergency responders, car wrecks, etc. because you can just stick it all in a hardened package and just have a few connectors to the rest of the car. Obviously the body panel

Combine these capacitors in body together with the motor in wheel [e-traction.com] thing, and you'll get that much closer to a car, that you can't fix without replacing too many functional parts, when all you needed to do was to replace wheels (how about winter?) and do some body work after a minor accident, so at some point the most economic thing will be just to toss the car away and get a new one.

Is that where they are going with this?

How about stopping with all this nonsense with the batteries and working on nuclear engines instead?

Why? A small nuclear reactor would be much safer than a tank of gas for example, as small nuclear reactors are only based on decay of the non-fissionable elements. Containing small amounts of nuclear material inside a metal box is not really that complicated, and it does not explode on impact for example.

here is what I am talking about [wikipedia.org], I am sure if they can use something like that on a space craft, they can figure out how to use something of that type in a car, having a number of precautions, including various counters etc., what would prevent any problem ahead of time. It's all a matter of cost, any issue is a matter of cost, but with nuclear reactors the problem is not cost today, it's government not letting people to work with it without government getting their panties in a knot.

So you would trust corporations to do this properly even though the link your sig is an object lesson in what happens when corporations aren't watched properly? Corporations can't be given absolute freedom, especially when the well-being of large amounts of people is at stake. A satellite orbiting the earth is so much less of a threat to health than millions of cars with the same power cell. It's a good idea, but I wouldn't trust Ford et al as far as I could throw them to do it properly.

So you would trust corporations to do this properly even though the link your sig is an object lesson in what happens when corporations aren't watched properly?

- if you actually watched the video in that link, you'd understand that the failure was the government meddling in business and economy, not corporations, and that's why the guy was able to predict it accurately, because it was very logical as to what government was doing to the money and laws that was going eventually to crash the housing bubble and eventually the currency and economy.

If you watched that video and got the message that there was a need for more government regulations, rather than for less

What I got from the video was that, while government meddling contributed, it was the selling of debt that really brought the house down. In the good old days if an organisation lent you money they expected to get paid back. With the selling on of debt that was no longer a problem so these companies started throwing money at people who would never be able to pay it back. Now you can blame your government for that behaviour but I'm not sure why.

- you should watch it again. The lax lending standards were the result of government policies, pushed via housing acts, FHA, Freddie/Fannie, while the money came from the Fed.

In absence of government, banks compete based on risk aversion and lending standards are high. Government created FDIC, which destroyed the reason for customers to bother checking the banks' risk aversion, destroyed reason for banks to bother with that, customers won't leave, they don't care.

You should start calling it a "nuclear battery" instead of a "reactor" when you're talking about it here. Doing so will give everybody else a more reasonable impression (because when you say "reactor" they're thinking Fukushima, or at least fission-powered naval vessel).

That's not a nuclear reactor, that's an RTG, and the power-to-weight ratio is a couple orders of magnitude too low to power a usable car.

On the other hand, something like the SAFE-400 [wikipedia.org] would be viable, if a bit heavy. Good luck shielding one well enough that it wouldn't release fission waste products in a worst-case accident, though.

Disposal and proliferation.
What happens when your redneck neighbor lets his nuclear-powered beater corrode in the back yard for 10 years? And do you really want someone being able to go to any car dealer to get their dirty bomb payload?
The device itself, in good condition and being used properly would be superior to any car on the road now. Unfortunately when it comes into contact with reality, the dream falls to pieces.

At some point I expect people to start using nuclear to run airplanes, then trucks and buses and then eventually cars, as the costs of not doing it will be getting higher and higher compared to costs of using such devices. Whatever objections we may have today, will have to give way to the economic realities that are coming in the future, of growing populations, desire to own vehicles and ability of the manufacturers to sell those vehicles, in the market, which will demand less and less pollution, increased

AFAIC we want RTGs everywhere, where they make sense, and they make much more sense in vehicles, than anything else we have today. If government was not impeding on our freedoms, we could have private development in that area, just like the time before government decided to use the nuclear power for war, and shut down any private use of it.

"Combine these capacitors in body together with the motor in wheel [e-traction.com] thing, and you'll get that much closer to a car, that you can't fix without replacing too many functional parts, when all you needed to do was to replace wheels (how about winter?) and do some body work after a minor accident"

On the contrary, the motor-in-wheel concept radically ~improves~ the maintainability of a car.

and the shock to the motor assembly? I didn't say it's a completely useless idea, it has limited use potential for fork lifters maybe, but for outside use in cars/trucks/buses/whatever? Yeah, not until we have roads made of perfectly straight glass.

Maybe in Miami, maybe in LA and possibly on Autobahn, but not in Toronto or St. Petersburg or Moscow, and even in Miami the road is not always perfectly polished, and those wheel assemblies, with electrical motors in them will come apart.

The biggest problem with the motor-in-wheel design appears to be the increased unsprung mass, which affects suspension response. I'm confident that problem will be solved by a combination of modern lightweight components, plus changing driver expectations of performance. Folks who drive hybrids today, have already accepted that lower performance and ride quality are an acceptable price for better mileage.

The only way "changing driver expectations of performance" is going to fly is if the performance is impr

As opposed to fixing car's body, which incidentally also serves as a battery, or fixing wheels, which also serve as the engine?

Actually there would be nothing to fix in that scenario, the reactor would have to be self contained and likely not user serviceable, while what it actually is, is just some hot material, and whatever method of energy extraction, be it a closed circuit water pump or a thermo-couple or something else, with a battery like interface and some instrumentation gauge interface to an on-boa

I mean, it sounds good at first. Make the whole car frame into a battery with supplementary capacitors. Maximize the power to weight ratio. Why not?

Well... battery material isn't necessarily a great structural material. Preventing short circuits in a vibrating frame with moving parts sounds fairly nightmarish. Replacing a worn out battery means replacing your car. And try not to get into an accident, and god help the EMT that tries to pry you out of the accident, especially if it's raining. That's what I ca

What could possibly go wrong driving around at speed with a tank of highly flammable liquid strapped to the undercarriage of the car.What insanity!!!The same can be said for LPG a high pressure canister of highly flammable GAS just behind your seat - imagine that in a crash.

Any dense energy source put into a car has a potential for that energy to be released in a way that is not intended especially in a crash. It is the details of the design that can make the energy storage (relatively) safe.

There's a differences in not the worst case, but the simple case of your examples from this one. We have a tank of volatile liquid which is dangerous when exposed only to an ignition source and oxygen, vs something that could make the car live.

An emergency services worker probably knows full well not to step in a car to help a victim when there's fuel leaking everywhere and a fire nearby. The same can not be said for someone approaching a wreckage which now simply may be live. There's no indication of the d

You aren't a mechanic I take it? There is a difference between "risky" and "silly".

I defy you to propose a practical way to implement, maintain, and repair "body panel capacitor" technology. Make it crashworthy, easy to fix, and economical to repair. Make it and its interconnects and power management work well in areas subject to road salt in winter.

Any experienced mechanic would laugh at the proposed locations.(I'll be polite and avoid the phrase "fucking stupid".)

The door skins and hood are frequently damaged in minor crashes, and required FLEXIBLE connection to the electrical system because they move. Serviceability would suck, and once damaged the parts would be unusable. Good luck ever fixing your car with aftermarket door skins or hood.

Take the SAME area, make a nice compact quick-swap STANDARD form-factor "capacitor module", and use those.

The door skins and hood are more and more commonly simply replaced when they are damaged. For the average vehicle a door shell is quite a bit cheaper than any significant body work; only for very new vehicles is this not true. Hoods are generally considered to be economically unrepairable if they have any but the very slightest damage because of the difficulty in getting a repair on a hood to behave like the rest of the hood. Trunk lids are more commonly repaired because they are not so large and thus they

Vehicle fires are common, and even without a petrol tank they burn very nicely. Exotic materials can produce dangerous products when burned, and their inhalation isn't just an EMS issue

When carbon fiber aircraft structures are burned or damaged, Crash Recovery teams are required to spray them with a fixative (commercial floor wax is one) then wrap them in plastic for transport and disposal.

A CONTAINERIZED capacitor can retain material which will be destroyed in a fire if it's the skin of the vehicle.

When carbon fiber aircraft structures are burned or damaged, Crash Recovery teams are required to spray them with a fixative (commercial floor wax is one) then wrap them in plastic for transport and disposal.

I wonder, does the same thing happen when rich idiots wreck their supercars?

If you know the capacitance and how much charge is stored you can compute the energy you could extract from the capacitor: E=Q^2/2C (see wikipedia [wikipedia.org]).

Larger capacitors (larger C) store less energy for the same charge (i.e. it is easier to charge them), but can store larger amounts of charge overall. Typically you charge up to a certain voltage, in that case E=V^2C/2, so the stored energy goes up with capacitance.

All super caps are low voltage, no way around that; There will just be a bunch of them in serial. The other problem is the electric motors typically run at higher voltages because they're more efficient like that and the AC-DC converter works better at higher voltages for energy recapture.